A Week In Pictures

It's becoming more difficult for me to keep this updated during the work week so please accept my most sincere apologies! I'll do the best I can! 

I had a pile of change sitting on my window ledge and I found a loonie and a toonie so I  thought i'd share! 

It's been a long week, full of projects and feeding and all the regular farm chores. No trips into town this week. They weren't lying before when they said it really is a special occasion.

Thursday evening, as I was sitting in my attic getaway, I looked over at the reading lamp in the southwest corner of the room to see 2 teeny tiny spiders making a home underneath the lampshade. While trying to snap a close up of them, they ran up their webs to hide under the shade.

It's nice to have some companions up here, though.

This is what I woke up to, out my window, Friday morning.

The first REAL snow of the season! It dropped about 2 inches overnight. It made working, shall we say, interesting. It started turning to slush by the afternoon and the pastures were reduced to fields of mud. Getting the tractor and trailer out through the pasture I was workin in that day was quite the challenge.

Here is a video of the snow and the sky. Basically, a moving version of the picture above. I just like hearing the birds.

This morning I woke up and did chores and got everything prepped for tomorrow so the feeding of the animals can kind of be on autopilot. Beth comes over and does the barn chores in the morning; I made up 10 bowls of dog food today so we can just put food out for all the dogs tonight and tomorrow; and then all I have to do is make sure the cows have water and change them over to fresh pasture. So that's kinda how I can make Sunday my day off and just coast through. It makes it real nice, though.

I was finished with all the chores and prep work this morning by noon. I had the rest of the afternoon off. The sun had come out and just about melted all the snow. But by the looks of the clouds that rolled in this evening, we'll probably have more snow by morning. Since the day was still young and I really had no set plans, I got to thinkin about what I should do with my free time. So I thought about it and finally decided to do what any farm boy does with an afternoon off. Skin a mink of course! And that's precisely what I did.

I broke out my brand new Case Trapper Skinning Knife; With the bone yellow finished handle and chrome vanadium razor sharp blades. She cut like a dream! I case skinned the mink and it turned out really nice! The eye holes stayed in tact and I cut around the ears perfectly! (I'm really only saying those things for Mike's benefit who I know will be proud when he reads this haha) I rolled the fur up and put it in the freezer to store until I get some other furs and have a tanning day. As for the carcass, I saved it and i'll use it to bait some of my other traps! I was really pleased with how the knife handled, even on a critter this small.

After the skinning fun, I did some work on rigging up some bucket traps. I found some old buckets in the barn that weren't being used and commandeered them for my own purposes. The way a bucket set works is you take a bucket and you put bait in the back of it. You lay the bucket on its side out wherever you are setting the trap and you place a Conibear trap in the mouth of the bucket. When the animal sticks it's head in the bucket to go for the bait, it hits the trap and sets it off and the trap closes on it and kills it instantly. One of the most humane methods of trapping. Dead before they know it. Plus it makes it real easy gathering the furs. They're already dead when you get there so you can just gather em up and reset the bucket!

I ended up modifying 7 buckets total. One for each of my 220 Conibears. After a little bit of figuring and measuring I rigged em up in no time. My primary target species with these sets is coon. I'm stoked to set em out tomorrow and see how they go!

As for this evening, I'll probably go grill up one my round steaks I set out to thaw this morning, have a nice supper, and then just relax and enjoy the night off.

X Jeremiah